Funny, You Don't Look Autistic: A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum

by Michael McCreary

Growing up is tough for anyone. But when you’ve been diagnosed with autism, it’s an extra challenge. You have to deal with the negative perceptions and misunderstandings other people have about you, all at an age when you probably can’t even spell “autism” yet. This means you need to figure out your own strengths and weaknesses and how you’re going to use them. That part took me a bit of trial and error to get right.

When you see someone naked in front of you—emotionally or physically—you become very accepting of their vulnerability. It meant I was never afraid of seeing people at their low points. And I learned to work harder to understand people who didn’t think the same way as me.

I was taught how to “act normal.” I learned to hold the door for people. I learned to tell the truth, but to understand when it was okay to lie for politeness. I learned to use my manners, not to swear, to respect personal space, and to stop talking when it was time for somebody else to have a turn. And then I got to school. And I discovered that no one else had learned these things.

It was clear to me that the other parents—the ones with “normal” kids—hadn’t taught their offspring basic etiquette, figuring they’d just pick it up on their own. If their kid didn’t have a diagnosis, they obviously didn’t think they needed to worry about it. And I felt cheated. Why did I have to learn how to be polite and respectful when other kids didn’t?

The simplest definition is that autism is a neurological variation. In less fancy language, it’s a difference in your brain and how it’s wired. You see and process things differently from people who are the norm—what we in the ASD community call neurotypical.

Autism deals in extremes: you have a lot more of something and a lot less of something else. Imagine you’re playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons where you have different attributes, like strength and dexterity. Now imagine you have 100 percent of one attribute and 15 percent of everything else. That’s what being autistic can feel like: it’s an imbalance. For instance, you might have a strong drive to act on your impulses, but less of the common sense that would help you control said impulses. Or you might have too much common sense, to the point where you can’t take action because you’re always thinking about what could go wrong. I’ve been both of these at different points in my life.

People sometimes use terms like “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” to describe folks on the spectrum, which can be wrongly taken to make assumptions about people’s intelligence. Really, what they’re meant to tell you is to what degree someone can get through their day in...

you feel every possible emotion and see every possible outcome of a social situation at once. It’s kind of like being Doctor Manhattan from the comic Watchmen: you’re seeing several time lines happening simultaneously. But unlike Doctor Manhattan, you can’t teleport to Mars every time you feel overwhelmed, so you shut down and remove yourself socially.

People are exhausting, and when your brain is working overtime to try to understand them, it can suck the joy out of socializing.

Having autism is like having too many tabs open on a computer. Or more accurately, it’s like trying to surf the web without an ad blocker. Every time you ...

One of the difficult things about autism is that when you’re talking to people, there can be a cognitive dissonance between the words they’re saying and their body language. So, if someone is smiling at me while calling me a moron, I’ll think they’re a nice guy and they’re just joking around. It wasn’t always clear to me when someone was actually making fun of me, and I often didn’t realize it until another person pointed it out.

And Andrew gave me a warning: “Don’t talk to him, or anyone like him. They’re pretending to be nice, but they’re not. Just because someone is smiling and saying nice things doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth.”

“Autistic people are incapable of feeling emotion.” Correction: Look, we’re not Vulcans. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Our society’s conception of empathy is misleading. Just because you don’t show what you’re feeling, doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling something. Also, I definitely cried at the end of The Wrath of Khan.

A fixation is, at its essence, just a love of something. Most people have hobbies or passions. But for people with autism, their fixation is the driving force behind everything they do. It might be pro wrestling, World War I aviation, insects, or Kodak cameras—anything we can research, systematize, and organize is comfortable for us. The downside: if you ask an Aspie, “Hey, what are you into?” be prepared to lose several hours.

Unfortunately, the incident with the snowballs in grade three wasn’t a one-time thing. Some kids just seemed to sense my difficulty in interpreting social cues and would take advantage of me. And the saddest thing was, I never had a clue.

It was always a heartbreaking thing to learn secondhand that people—people who I thought liked me—were actually messing with my mind. And as time went on, it started to really put me at odds with others. I wasn’t sure who I could trust.

I figured out that people don’t usually change if you put bananas in their desks. When they change is if you help them see the other as a human being.

It’s important to stand up to authority when it’s corrupt, but it’s also important to understand how it became corrupt in the first place, so you can better reason with them. Sometimes they’re scared because they don’t know as much as the people they work for (the EA in the Hub); sometimes they’re just sick and tired (the geography teacher).

Self-advocacy is an autistic person’s best friend and an important concept for anyone with special challenges. In my experience, many students with ASD are inclined to work harder when you can collaborate with them and tailor a program to their skill set. Things like independent learning plans can be very helpful. The first step is just saying something. Find someone you can talk to (a teacher, student helper, or even the principal), let them know what your problem is, and talk about how you can deal with it. Be articulate and patient with them.

I’ve found many people with ASD have this in common: we obsess about the negative.

I’ve gotten better over the years at dealing with my fear that people will hate me, and one thing that helps is the knowledge that a certain percentage of the people you encounter are always going to hate you, and for no particular reason. It’s going to be a constant through your life. Once you come to grips with this knowledge, it’s liberating. You’re not afraid of trying to appease people and make them like you, because you know you can’t. It might sound nihilistic, but in this instance, resignation will save you.

Friendship is deeper than having mutual interests. Friendship is setting aside time in your day to help someone forget about life for a while.

Sarcasm is also difficult for many autistic people; it’s often cued by someone’s tone of voice, which is hard for us to recognize. I have a hard time understanding sarcasm unless someone is really obvious about it. “Were they serious?” is a recurring thought of mine. When you talk to someone with ASD, try to use literal terms and direct language. And remember that they may need a little help to understand the importance of tone and nonverbal communication in conversation.

As a part of our literal-mindedness, many of us on the spectrum are sticklers for the truth. If someone asks for our opinion, we’re inclined to give it to them, unabridged, because we respect their intelligence. That said, there is a world of difference between honesty and unsolicited comments. I, like many a person with autism, have found this out the hard way. For Aspies, it’s good to remind ourselves to think before we speak. While it’s fine to be upfront with what you want from people, sometimes being too upfront can put people off. It’s all part of communication, which is something I, and many of my Aspie buds, have struggled with. For instance, we can be too specific in some areas, while not being specific enough in others. It’s gotten me into trouble. Most significant-ly, in my romantic life.

In fact, as I’ve said before, people with autism do have the capacity to feel—in fact, we often feel so much at once that we shut down as a coping mechanism. Also, we don’t always assign the right meaning to our feelings.

Communication’s a two-way street. Not all of the blame can fall squarely on the giver or the recipient (regardless of each’s neurological wiring). What we have to do is be understanding of one another, not judge others exclusively by our own experience, and, to quote my mom, shut up and listen.

Like I said, specificity is an Aspie’s best friend.

But luckily my fear of failure was dwarfed by my fear of being disliked. I stuck around. In fact, I did three more scenes. Each one less awful than the last. I was learning. More than that, I was catching up on a decade’s worth of social misunderstanding. A conversation is like a relationship. It’s built on trust, and both parties must be engaged.

“Life is too short to be a chore, so why not say yes and have fun with it?”

To put it lightly, I suck at math. I am a living debunking of the stereotype that autistic people are mathematical geniuses. How bad am I? I’m so bad at math, my tutor at Kumon told me, “I think we should see other people.”

Neil Gaiman once said: “You have to be on time, easy to work with, and good at what you do. If you are two out of three of these, you’ll be fine.”

I didn’t cope well with failure and was beginning to withdraw.

You should say yes to life when it benefits you and those you care about, but you always have the right to say no when it doesn’t.

An advocate can be a carefree prankster, and a comic can be a deep-thinking philosopher. Your job does not define you. A nice lesson, even if it took me three times to learn it.

You might see an autistic person flapping their hands or repeating words or sounds and be curious about that. This is called self-stimulatory behavior, and in the autism community we call it “stimming.”

Some types of stimming can be a bit off-putting to neurotypicals, but believe me, we’re more afraid of you than you are of us.

“Stims” come in many shapes and sizes: staring at lights, repetitive blinking, moving your fingers in front of your eyes, tapping your ears, snapping your fingers, making sounds, spinning objects, rubbing your skin, scratching, smelling objects, rocking, jumping, clapping, or leg-shaking. A stim might indicate that someone has a problem, but the stim itself is not the problem. In fact, asking an autistic person not to stim can end up causing more problems than the stim itself.

Before I could even raise my hand, one family had already asked my question: “My kids can only connect with me through me performing a task for them. What do I do?” The moderator responded: “People want a connection on their own terms. If you can replace that task with something you both enjoy, maybe you could find a better connection.”